Search This Blog

Subscribe to this blog

Follow by Email

Sye-dim presuppositionalism

I have to go off for maybe a week. Will be back. Carry on with out me.

In the meantime, I produce a sketch of my own presuppositionalism I have been developing. It goes like this.

My claim: Sye's mind is addled and his thinking unreliable because he was hit on the head by a rock.

Prove this is false Sye.

Try to, and I will say - "But your "proof" presupposes your mind is not addled and you can recognise a proof when you see it. So it fails."

Ask me to prove my claim and I will say: "But prove to me your mind is not addled, then, Sye". Which you won't be able to, for the above reason. I might then add, with a flourish - "So you see, it's proved by the impossibility of the contrary".

And of course I have a good explanation for why your brain is addled - you were hit by a rock.

Is my claim reasonable, then? Of course not. It's bullshit. I really can't see howyour position is any less of a bullshit position. Can you?

That's possibly one of the funniest "arguments" I've ever heard. Great work, Stephen.

On a different note, are you back to moving about, or are you still breathing with a respirator and speaking by blinking your eye while someone recites letters to you? Oh wait, I think that was someone else.

“Politicians’ Purgatory”: A self-selected group of politicians perform their usual offices [debate, ministerial and constituency duties etc.] for three weeks without telling a deliberate lie……

“BE a Christian!” a dozen prominent Christians, including the Pope, the Anglican Archbishops, and sanctimonious preachers of various stripes – among them American televangelists – actually practice what they profess for three weeks at the end of which they will have sold all their possessions and give the proceeds to the poor, actually loved those who differ from them, and become as little children……

“Philosophers’ Stone”: a group of philosophers – on Stephen’s blog and elsewhere – will debate for three weeks without ever contradicting themselves, making baseless assertions, or putting forward fallacious arguments…….

Great post, Stephen. Way to call Sye's bullshit "bullshit." I stopped reading his comments when I realized how disingenuous/ deluded he is.

Anticant, if they made those shows, I'd watch reality TV. I'd love to see any - all - of those. Imagine, a Christian acting like a Christian! I've only known one of those my whole life, and I'm not sure how she'd fair on the contradictory stuff.

Thanks, Jackie. As I keep on monotonously pointing out, attempting to make committed religious believers such as Sye more reasonable by arguing with them is futile, because for them reason is the handmaiden of faith and they only employ it with the object of bolstering up their irrational convictions. They make a positive virtue of believing six impossible things before breakfast, whereas we endeavour through reason to ground our beliefs upon tangible and justified evidence.

However, these discussions aren't a waste of time because, as Stephen says, they clarify basic issues and help us to rethink some of our own unexamined assumptions, which must be good.

Anticant said: "attempting to make committed religious believers such as Sye more reasonable by arguing with them is futile"

I like you Anticant, but on this issue I must disagree. There are fanatics out there that simply need to hear the right words to plant a healthy seed of skepticism. I've known a few former radicals that told me they were givin just the right nudge to doubt their theology, and now they look at the world with a more critical mind.

Hi Phaedrus - Down the years, I've known many intelligent and reasonable Christians who didn't use their faith as a bludgeon like these fundies do. I think the current aggressiveness of these guys is a reaction to Islamic militancy. If we're not careful, between them they'll spark off "Armageddon" and plunge us all into a nuclear nightmare. At least those running America and Russia during the Cold War were relatively sane, and recognised the logic of MAD. I doubt whether that holds any more with today's religious nutjobs.

I agree with your assessment of today's Christian radicals. It seems 9/11 really did a number on the right-wing theists. Ironically, instead of making them reevaluate their religious fanaticism, it strengthened their dogmatic resolve.

That being said, I'm really excited that we have more and more progressive atheist writers who have finally made a considerable impact on today's generation. It's questionable whether these authors could have gotten their foot in the door with credible publicists in the 80's and 90's.

"None of us is totally rational: emotion plays an integral part in all our thinking."

True enough. Unfortunately it seems to be a criticism often implicitly leveled at rational thought that it abandons this and leads to a rather soul-less (in a derogatory sense) outlook. This seems to find resonance with too many people and leads them gradually into the faith positions of dogmatism and unthinking obedience, ultimately suppressing many of their nobler emotions. The challenge is how to root out the superstition without causing a backlash.

Sane and competent education would help [introductory philosophy and logic courses in schools??].

Sadly, the way I was taught to think and acquire knowledge has been superseded by pseudo-academic rubbish such as 'postmodernism' and mindless moral relativism that inculcates bogus tolerance - in fact, indifferentism - by teaching that nothing is better or worse than anything else, and that all belief-systems, however absurd, are deserving of 'respect'.

These ways of thinking open the doors to religious and political totalitarianism.

Stephen said: "My claim: Sye's mind is addled and his thinking unreliable because he was hit on the head by a rock.Prove this is false Sye."

Well, since you have been directing people to this post, I will be glad to address it. Your very demand of proof from me presupposes that I can understand the request, and that my mind is, in fact, not addled.

Stephen said: "My claim: Sye's mind is addled and his thinking unreliable because he was hit on the head by a rock.Prove this is false Sye."

Sye said: Well, since you have been directing people to this post, I will be glad to address it. Your very demand of proof from me presupposes that I can understand the request, and that my mind is, in fact, not addled.

Stephen replies. Oh dear Sye. You seem to be trying to use an argument against me, and thus logic. But you can't do that until you have first proved you weren't hit on the head and that your use of logic is reliable.

Stephen said: "But you can't do that until you have first proved you weren't hit on the head and that your use of logic is reliable."

I have never said that atheists can't use logic, just that they cannot account for what they are doing.

Why not get into the argument Stephen, what are you afraid of? Let's just compare how our respective worldviews account for the universal, abstract, invariant laws of logic, and on what basis we proceed with the assumption that they will hold.

All you are telling us is that you have no account for logic, and no basis for assuming that it will hold, which has been my point all along.

Sye just said about me: "All you are telling us is that you have no account for logic."

No,I am NOT even telling you that. I might have such an account. I have provided three atheist friendly accounts or views of logic, at least two of which I think might well be true. You have refuted none of them. In fact you have not even tried.

What I AM telling you is that YOU have no proof of God's existence. A fact that is now perfectly clear. A fact you try to draw attention from by repeatedly asking "But how do YOU explain logic then?"!!!

Aren't you beginning to feel just a bit embarrassed about endlessly making this move? I mean, even some of your fellow presuppositionalists must be beginning to squirm for you by now.

After your initial presupposition, you seek to use logic to reach a conclusion about Sye. However, your initial presupposition doesn't give you a justification for using logic, so your subsequent use of logic is an unjustified act of blind faith that logic is always reliable.

Sye's initial presupposition, of the Bible being true (at least that's what I think it is, I don't know him well), gives him a justification for using logic, as logic is apparent from the Bible. That's what makes Sye's presupposition a better one than the one you made up.

Re Sye's most recent comment - "can't" means not being able to. When Sye said that he never said you can't use logic he meant he never said you were not able to use it. Not being allowed to use logic is different, and it seems he had previously not allowed you to use it because you couldn't justify it in your worldview.

Popular Posts

What is Humanism? “Humanism” is a word that has
had and continues to have a number of meanings. The focus here is on kind of atheistic
world-view espoused by those who organize and campaign under that banner in the
UK and abroad. We should acknowledge that
there remain other uses of term. In one of the loosest senses of the expression,
a “Humanist” is someone whose world-view gives special importance to human
concerns, values and dignity. If that is what a Humanist is, then of course most
of us qualify as Humanists, including many religious theists. But the fact
remains that, around the world, those who organize under the label “Humanism” tend
to sign up to a narrower, atheistic view. What does Humanism,
understood in this narrower way, involve? The boundaries of the concept remain somewhat
vague and ambiguous. However, most of those who organize under the banner of Humanism
would accept the following minimal seven-point characterization of their world-view.

The vast majority of Biblical historians believe there is evidence sufficient to place Jesus’ existence beyond reasonable doubt. Many believe the New Testament documents alone suffice firmly to establish Jesus as an actual, historical figure. I question these views. In particular, I argue (i) that the three most popular criteria by which various non-miraculous New Testament claims made about Jesus are supposedly corroborated are not sufficient, either singly or jointly, to place his existence beyond reasonable doubt, and (ii) that a prima facie plausible principle concerning how evidence should be assessed – a principle I call the contamination principle – entails that, given the large proportion of uncorroborated miracle claims made about Jesus in the New Testament documents, we should, in the absence of independent ev…

Here is a first half only of a rough draft of a chapter for someone else's book. Feedback please...

Theme is Humanism: reason, science and skepticism

What are science and reason? Humanists
expound the virtues of science and reason. But what are science and reason? And
we should we think it wise to rely on them? By
science, I shall mean that approach to finding out about reality based on the
scientific method. This is a method that was fully developed only a few hundred
years ago. Science, as I’ll use the term here, is a comparatively recent
invention, its development owing a great deal to 16th and 17th Century thinkers
such as the philosopher Francis Bacon (1561-1626). So what
is the scientific method? Here’s a rough sketch. Scientists collect data
through observation and experiment. They formulate hypotheses and broader
theories about the nature of reality to account for what they observe.
Crucially, they then test their
theories. Scientists derive from their theories predictions th…